I am not allowed to feel sick about it.
I feel sick about it.
I open the glovebox.
I take out the second phone. The phone that is not on any of the Moretti registries. The phone that has been in this glovebox for two years and has not yet rung.
It rings.
In my hand.
Unknown number.
I press accept.
I do not speak.
A breath on the other end. Older. The breath of a man who has been smoking for fifty years.
"Ms. Ferraro."
The voice is Greek.
"You have something I have waited thirty-eight years to recover."
I do not breathe.
"We should talk."
12
SEAN
The Internal Affairs summons came in at 11:42 a.m. on Saturday.
The hearing was scheduled for Tuesday at 9 a.m.
Tuesday at 8:47 a.m., I am walking out of my apartment in Astoria with a coffee in my left hand and a folder in my right. The wound in my side has closed enough that, for the first time since the warehouse, I am no longer bleeding through the dressing.
I have been awake since four.
I have been thinking about her for four.
I push the front door open with my shoulder. I step onto Crescent Street.
The man on the sidewalk to my left is not someone I have seen before. The man at the corner of 30th Avenue is. He was outside the diner two blocks from my apartment yesterday morning. The car at the curb is a black SUV with windows so dark they are not produced on Queens residential streets in the ordinary course of business.
Three men. Plus the driver. Four.
None of it is going to matter.
The man on the sidewalk is already inside my arc by the time I have the math. He puts a hand on my wrist, turns my arm toward my hip, and uses my body's momentum against me. I am on the ground beside the SUV before I register that I have been moved.
He is not rough. He is professional.
That is worse than rough.
A bag goes over my head. Canvas. Heavy. A door opens. I am lifted and placed on the van's floor. The door closes. The van moves.
